You know you're a nerd when...

this makes you laugh out loud:

It's even relevant to this blog...

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Following up on our discussion of how it is OK to be an Atheist as long as you know your place, we find a classic example of the kind of thinking that rationalist non-believers encounter all the time, even if it is not spoken out loud. This time it is spoken out loud: This is a conversation…
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But wouldn't it be too late to evaluate the fitness of something that has already become Skynet? Also, what if becoming Skynet is the least expensive option in the problem domain? That's only the equivalent of 22 million water crossings.

You just put in a function that checks if your algorithm is going to become Skynet in the next generation, before you actually apply the fitness function.

That's what I do.

And you don't want the evolution of Skynet to be impossible, just costly.

John -

Whatever you had linked to has moved on - there's nothing visible about Skynet there now - at least not from the USA!

Ian, I still get the xkcd page (with rollover - which reminds you that you want to minimize, not maximize, the function).

By freelunch (not verified) on 23 Jan 2009 #permalink

Ok, what's skynet? Is that the thing from the Terminator or some kind of ISP?

Nevermind. Spent 10 seconds to look it up myself. Does this mean I lose nerd-cred, both for not automatically knowing this (sorry, watched the first movie, liked it, thought the second was a lot of lame, and never watched anything else dealing with the Terminator), and for not googling it?

Heh at least it was in python.